The present invention is directed to a toy and, more particularly to a commonly available item such as a bottle cap or beverage can modified to be readily attached to other such items to form a variety of differently shaped structures.
It has long been desirable to develop some way of adapting commonly available, cheap, and normally disposable items for use as a toy. The primary advantage sought is the low cost of such a toy since the basic parts are originally utilitarian, and bought as such, and later become disposable. In addition, these are normally bought in great quantities over a period of time and would thus be normally always available around the house. Bottle caps and various types of cans, such as beer cans or soda cans, are exemplary of such items. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,018,583, 3,154,882, and 3,815,281 disclose various modifications of a beverage can for use as a toy while U.S. Pat. No. 3,186,127 discloses a bottle cap of the crimped metal type which serves mainly as a support base for different figures made of paper and/or metal.
The disadvantages of all of these approaches lies in the extra parts required so that use of the caps and cans is feasible as well as interesting and attractive. These parts must be bought in a store or built in the house, stored, and then somehow connected to each other, thereby adding to the cost of the toy and making its use awkward and inconvenient. It is possible that these considerations have prevented any of the previous approaches from becoming a commercial success.